Alonso: Alpine “best team” in F1 midfield without fastest car

The French squad overtook both its rivals to move into fifth place in the constructors’ championship after a sensational Hungarian GP, won by Alonso’s teammate Esteban Ocon. The Spaniard finished in fourth place in the race.

Alpine has been able to hold on to fifth since then despite Alonso believing the A521 is not as competitive as the AlphaTauri and the Aston Martin.

But Alonso says the team’s ability to perform on Sundays and avoid mistakes has made Alpine a stronger package.

“I think we are good. We’re good on every front,” said Alonso. “We are delivering the job, as I said, on Sundays.

“We don’t have maybe the car to compete in pure performance with AlphaTauri or with Aston Martin, but we have the team to compete [with] them on Sundays and to score points.

“So we will try to fight for this fifth place in the constructors’ championship until the end, if possible. So in that respect, I think we are okay on the race team.”

He added: “That’s something that is our strength as a team, you know, to score points every Sunday.

“We don’t have probably the fastest car on the midfield, but we seem to have, you know, probably the best team on the midfield, so that allowed us to score points every Sunday.”

The Spanish driver finished in eighth, two places ahead of Ocon, in the Italian GP, a race where Alonso expected Alpine to be weak compared to its main rivals.

“I think there’s gonna be ups and downs for everybody,” he said of the reminder of the season. “We saw in this triple-header that we are up and down in the level of competitiveness and on the grid.

“In Spa we were okay on the dry. We were not okay with the wet. Zandvoort we were okay all weekend. Here we are not. So I think it’s track dependence.

“So I don’t know exactly in Russia, Turkey and Austin how it’s going to be. I think it will be better.

“I will say that Monza was already in the calendar as one of the worst [for Alpine]. We knew that.”